Books of the Times; Books Of The Times

Published: August 20, 1981

By Steve Lohr TEXAS RICH. The Hunt Dynasty From the Early Oil Days Through the Silver Crash. By Harry Hurt 3d. 446 pages. W.W. Norton. $16.95.

H .L. HUNT was the 20th century's robber baron. His wealth was of a scale that would have made Croesus envious. J. Paul Getty, who knew something of such matters, once said, ''In terms of extraordinary, independent wealth, there is only one man -H.L. Hunt.''

A man of reckless energy and raging appetites, Hunt cut a broad swath through life. He was a gambler, oil wildcatter, polygamist, health nut, propagandist. He lived by his own rules, and there weren't many. ''Mr. Hunt was amoral,'' as one of his personal secretaries put it. ''He didn't set out to do good or bad. He was just determined to do what he wanted to do.'' Wheeling and Dealing

What Hunt did best, judging from the evidence in ''Texas Rich'' by Harry Hurt 3d, an editor for The Texas Monthly, was wheel and deal in the oil fields of East Texas during the early 1930's. Through cunning, hustling, geological instinct and luck, Hunt persuaded C.M. (Dad) Joiner to sell his leases in the field that three years later was proclaimed the biggest in the world, the Saudi Arabia of its day.

The deal was signed after marathon negotiations, hothouse style, in a Dallas hotel room. At the time, the oil industry was skeptical about the commercial prospects for the land in East Texas. After a promising well or two, several of the later probes had come up dry. However, Hunt figured that the dry holes were off the field altogether and that the motherlode was in the opposite direction, where Joiner's leases were clustered. Joiner was strapped for funds, fleeing a horde of disgruntled creditors - and Hunt knew it. Moreover, by the time the deal was signed, Hunt also knew that his theory regarding the field had just been confirmed by an exploratory well in the crucial area, unbeknownst to Joiner. Hunt made a shady payment of $20,000 for the results of the drill test before it became public.

The Dad Joiner deal was vintage H.L. Hunt. He was a loner, a rogue and an all-the-chips-on-one-number gambler. Hunt had bankrolled the deal with someone else's money. He made his big bet when the established companies in the oil fraternity were doubtful that the East Texas field would be a moneymaker. And there was the scent of scandal to the transaction. Recall, too, that Hunt was doing his high-rolling when a good share of the American people was on bread lines.

His stake in the East Texas field was the foundation of the Hunt empire. Where this oil interest was concerned, Hunt was an able steward, not just a dealmaker. He pushed Texas politicians to mandate a rationing system insuring steady, orderly production, rather than wholesale development that would have depressed prices and depleted the field. The instrument of this policy was the Texas Railroad Commission, which served as the model for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Hunt was a central figure in the coming of what has been called the oil age. Yet never again was he the cagey operator in the midst of events of general concern.

Thereafter, he was mostly an eccentric crackpot, and a bungling one at that. He started up a food business to sell his health foods and nostrums. It limped along, losing money for years, much to the consternation of some members of the Hunt family, especially Nelson, Bunker and Herbert. Finally, in 1971, with H.L. in his 80's, he was persuaded to sell it off, at a total loss of $71 million.

Hunt tried his hand at political dealmaking but was spurned by the national parties. The richest man in the world would show up at political conventions and be treated like a pariah. Candidates understandably reasoned that a man whose politics were somewhere to the right of the John Birch Society would be more a liability than an asset.

His personal life constituted a sprawling empire of its own. He had three families and sired 15 children. And much of the latter portion of Mr. Hurt's unflattering biography is given to the catfight among the three families to grab or hold some chunk of the Hunt fortune.

After Hunt's death in 1974 at age 85, the author brings us up to date on, among other things, the collapse of the silver market in early 1980 that pinched Bunker and Herbert so badly, prompting the Federal Reserve to step in and help clean up the mess. This subject has already been thoroughly worked in newspapers and magazines; Mr. Hurt adds little that is new. A Long Anticlimax

Yet the book is mainly a biography of H.L. Hunt. As such, it is a painstakingly researched, restrained and well-written account. The drawback of the book is that once Hunt's day of glory in the Texas oil fields has passed, the story of his life isn't all that interesting. True, he was an unconventional renegade to match any, he possessed the money to pursue his whims and the family in-fighting is as entertaining as any soap opera.

Still, it wears thin. Hunt had little imagination, no over-arching intelligence, no larger vision or sense of noblesse oblige. Hunt seems, finally, to have been a hollow man or, to borrow the author's term, ''a hick.''